Aftermath, as we say.
I really have little, if anything, in me to say about the NYC bombings this weekend. Yet, parts of me feel the urge to pontificate . . . of course, there's also the questions from a couple of close friends wanting to know when I'll ponder.
When 9-11 happened I was teaching a course--we were covering the Comstock Laws--and when Saddam Hussein was captured I was shoveling my car out of a blizzard. When he was executed I was in rural Virginia for a holiday and packing, as I was headed to my first trip to Turkey that January. When Osama Bin Laden was captured I was doing laundry in an urban, city 'hood fashion. I pontificated here, probably one of the better ones . . . or not.
When bombs, of pressure cookers and burner phones, went off in NYC I was home . . . reading literature on Chinese American restaurants, blaring some "empowered women's mix" from Apple radio, and rotating with edits on a grant application to finally finish my Aegean Sea cultural study of tourism and transnational binaries. I, in single girl fashion, was bopping about my tiny studio in a tank and panties since it was muggy and mildly warm. Nice imagery, I know.
A couple of hours before I was wandering in my 'hood, well more pointedly slowly walking home with shoulders loaded down with quinoa, bell peppers, tomatillos, and the makings for my dinner. I snapped a moment, of daily life, to capture my own private thoughts and perhaps my own sense of private space on a public street amid shoppers, lurkers, and locales.
We reside in a time to be alive with constant threats, chatter, and connectivity. In a year where we've seen a growing amount of global carnage with terror attacks, Orlando shaking our American souls, and we wait with baited breath for the next election blunder pipe bombs reminiscent of Boston certainly make us look twice. Too many years of watching CSI shows makes me think twice about not taking out the trash and leaving my dirty panties on the floor before leaving home, but protracted months of prolonged message threads from friends--always into the wee hours of the night and morning--waiting for news, waiting to hear check ins from those we know, and waiting for the dust to clear has left a darkening mark on mine and our collective souls.
Today I taught Ancient Greece to my World Civ course, and in the thrust of conversation the question of gods, religions, and clashing cultures and peoples arose. As we looked at the Trojan War--pausing at class break with the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War--we spent a great deal of time pondering mythology, its meaning, and how romance and imagery structure our lives and sense of place. For the Greeks, they had Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey with rich images of females deterring men (i.e. the sirens) and the romance of the voyage, the fight, the victory. Of course, throughout it all the metaphoric struggle for self realization and salvation drive the tales home, resounding in the mind's eye long after the class has passed. In class we looked at a brief excerpt of The Iliad and compared it to the Bible, the similarities, and the connections accross time, space, and reality. The message--amid it all and changing centuries, languages, and cultures--remains. The struggle of man, the the struggle of acceptance drive the warrior forward. The search for approval and acceptance centers us all.
Thus, in a year of constant struggle, attacks seemingly lurking around every corner, and a global bed of uncertainty I can only hope that these bumps and flashes in the night and day will fade having a far lesser legacy of popular memory than the infamous Trojan Horse or Homer's mythical creatures of love, lure, and atrocity.
When 9-11 happened I was teaching a course--we were covering the Comstock Laws--and when Saddam Hussein was captured I was shoveling my car out of a blizzard. When he was executed I was in rural Virginia for a holiday and packing, as I was headed to my first trip to Turkey that January. When Osama Bin Laden was captured I was doing laundry in an urban, city 'hood fashion. I pontificated here, probably one of the better ones . . . or not.
When bombs, of pressure cookers and burner phones, went off in NYC I was home . . . reading literature on Chinese American restaurants, blaring some "empowered women's mix" from Apple radio, and rotating with edits on a grant application to finally finish my Aegean Sea cultural study of tourism and transnational binaries. I, in single girl fashion, was bopping about my tiny studio in a tank and panties since it was muggy and mildly warm. Nice imagery, I know.
A couple of hours before I was wandering in my 'hood, well more pointedly slowly walking home with shoulders loaded down with quinoa, bell peppers, tomatillos, and the makings for my dinner. I snapped a moment, of daily life, to capture my own private thoughts and perhaps my own sense of private space on a public street amid shoppers, lurkers, and locales.
Shortly after, in a true blink of the eye, a moment jars from private to public and seemingly benign memory to meaningful and noteworthy.
We reside in a time to be alive with constant threats, chatter, and connectivity. In a year where we've seen a growing amount of global carnage with terror attacks, Orlando shaking our American souls, and we wait with baited breath for the next election blunder pipe bombs reminiscent of Boston certainly make us look twice. Too many years of watching CSI shows makes me think twice about not taking out the trash and leaving my dirty panties on the floor before leaving home, but protracted months of prolonged message threads from friends--always into the wee hours of the night and morning--waiting for news, waiting to hear check ins from those we know, and waiting for the dust to clear has left a darkening mark on mine and our collective souls.
Today I taught Ancient Greece to my World Civ course, and in the thrust of conversation the question of gods, religions, and clashing cultures and peoples arose. As we looked at the Trojan War--pausing at class break with the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War--we spent a great deal of time pondering mythology, its meaning, and how romance and imagery structure our lives and sense of place. For the Greeks, they had Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey with rich images of females deterring men (i.e. the sirens) and the romance of the voyage, the fight, the victory. Of course, throughout it all the metaphoric struggle for self realization and salvation drive the tales home, resounding in the mind's eye long after the class has passed. In class we looked at a brief excerpt of The Iliad and compared it to the Bible, the similarities, and the connections accross time, space, and reality. The message--amid it all and changing centuries, languages, and cultures--remains. The struggle of man, the the struggle of acceptance drive the warrior forward. The search for approval and acceptance centers us all.
Thus, in a year of constant struggle, attacks seemingly lurking around every corner, and a global bed of uncertainty I can only hope that these bumps and flashes in the night and day will fade having a far lesser legacy of popular memory than the infamous Trojan Horse or Homer's mythical creatures of love, lure, and atrocity.
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